


and then, it is time to go

by moonbeatblues



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: MAJOR PZN 30 SPOILERS, Other, god., it gave me Vibes, i’m....., listened to a lot of the emily alone album this week and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: They’re playing chess with Gur. Valence wants a little to impress them, to move with purpose, but the truth is that they hardly know the rules. They think he can tell.“Do you feel beloved, Valence?”(major pzn 30 spoilers)
Relationships: Kal'mera Broun/Valence
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	and then, it is time to go

**Author's Note:**

> hey!!! what!!!! ow!!!!

They see him on the screen and  _burn_ . Thisbe’s head tilts to let them know that she knows, too.

The new mask is still. They’re actually glad for it.

—

They’re playing chess with Gur. Valence wants a little to impress them, to move with purpose, but the truth is that they hardly know the rules. They think he can tell.

“Do you feel beloved, Valence?”

(They think of their body sitting in Broun’s lap, motionless legs hiked around their waist. Broun takes a pair of wide pliers to a bent wire just as they, a little restless, thrilled somehow by the sight of themself, approach the open mask again.

The pull passes through Valence and they jolt. 

Broun drops the pliers. They jolt again.

“Fuck, sorry,” they say. “Didn’t know you were in there.”

“Should I not be?”

Broun comes alive with a wash of hesitation. “Uh—“

Valence begins to drift out.

“No! No, it’s fine. If you want to be.”

_Do you want me to be?_ they do not say, because they think the answer is yes but that Broun will not say it.

“Okay,” they say instead. Broun picks up the pliers.)

“A little.”

“But not by God.”

Their ears don’t flatten anymore. “No.”

Gur doesn’t speak for a few more turns— finally, they take Valence’s second rook and laugh.

“Valence, I hate to say it, but you may be worse at this than Miss Kesh.”

—

The moment they take to power down the frame is a long one.

They imagine hints of themselves caught, in a jar, condensed to rain and collected as water.  What would remain, they think.

They feel the sensory data stop transmitting, from the feet and fingertips first, then the arms and legs until they can feel only their face, the unmoving snout.

Valence thinks of Gur again and suddenly the feeling is awful—they are trapped in themself— and they emerge from the faceplate in a hurry.

They look at it for a while as they work, thinking of shells and the echo of the ocean in their hollows. shreds of power and force in a cold, quiet thing.

Then, there is a gunshot, and they realize very calmly that it is time to go.

—

Powering up again takes longer. They make the decision to enjoy every second of it.

Each sensory point coming awake, rushing to tell them how the air feels where it is. How the floor meets their feet, how their own body feels as they smooth their hands along it.

They think of Broun and love them, at least a little. They think of Gur and pray to the True Divine, the pieces Mow is carting away, that the others free him.

They are not good with a gun.

They don’t have to be.

—

They coalesce around their own suit as they start to hiss out of it. The mask does not move, but purple smoke emerges from the nose, the sides of the closed mouth. Crysanth is below them, and Thisbe is behind, and then Thisbe is further behind.

They think Crysanth probably wishes it was Sovereign Immunity who would destroy her and be destroyed in return. Crysanth spits blood and looks at them like a shell, like something whose contents can be washed of self and fed back in, diluted and unassuming as cotton, a body filled with a mind made of snow.

_There will be nothing left of me_ _,_ they think.  _They cannot have my shell if I break that, too._

They remove their mask, and the ocean, full and searing and bright like nothing and everything, burns from them, and they are not washed clean but dissolved entirely, gone but not lost.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m @seafleece on tumblr, come say hello!! i’m workin on another thing and i’m still Very Sad so now is a good time to scream in my inbox


End file.
